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Planet Waves

The Game - Match 3 or more planet types together, to remove them from the grid. This is done by shooting a quantum planet toward the grid, which has a chance of landing in any row - Change the probability of landing in a particle row by changing the wavelength of the planet.

The game mechanics are slightly broken given that it is incredibly difficult to clear a stage, but I ran out of time trying to fix it.

HI!
I think that you have a good idea, and another point of view of the connect 4, but I can't play comfortably because I don't get how control where the ball goes ¿Maybe if you draw the objective direction with a white rect?
Cheers!

I cleared one group before I died, and I don't think that was because of any skilled play on my part. Definitely make it more definite where it will land, and make it possible to have a low probability on the lowest row.

VERY innovative! I probably managed to clear ten sets or so and felt very good about myself for managing it. However, at the end of the day, I didn't find it much fun to have so little control. If "winning" means clearing the board, I don't see it happening :).

Like Geti said, it needs an offset; seems like the bottom row or two are always favored.

I do have a version that fixed the bottom row bug and added offset available here (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/75047185/PlanetWaves-Windows-PostCompo-v1.zip) if you would like to try. Still seems way too difficult though.

It works, I don't know I thought it was pretty easy to understand after reading the help screen. I just didn't find the game mechanic fun. It's a cool idea though and maybe it could be applied in some other way?

Neato - animating the planet moving to its eventual destination would be nice, as well as animating the match-and-removal process (blink or similar). One thing that would make it easier (and possibly winnable) would be fewer colors of planets.

Neat idea; I like the probabilistic delivery of planets, but it seems particularly unsuited to a matching game. It felt like drunk tetris or something. The program worked well and looked nice, and the probability thing was very nicely displayed.

Very interesting mechanic. Seems a shame though that you always have a high probability of getting a planet dumped on the base frequency/slot(?), though. Maybe part of the spectrum shouldn't be included, or have some switch to invert the probabilities? The audio was pretty annoying; would have preferred no sound, I think. :D

I like the idea. Using the wavelength to control the launching of planets was a quite original idea. I kind of feel that it is too difficult tho since there is so much depending on random chance and so little depending on the player's actions. The sound when changing wavelength also got a bit annoying quite fast. The game runs just fine on Linux using Wine. Nice work!

Hum so you're breaking a few rules in video games. 1) Direct control: tuning random chances isn't really fun by itself, it needs at least good incentives (think about gambling). 2) Explicit feedback: we can't see clearly the little planets going through the grid (at least I don't), so the game feels buggy. But still, this has potential, maybe introducing a bit a "air control" after the shot could help.